Leave your old trusted Lonely Planet at home. We have teamed up with good friends and family and asked them to curate the insiders guide to a city or a place they know better than most. Time to visit parts unknown. First on deck is internationally famed DJ, Kasper Bjørke, and his guide to the clubbing capital, Berlin.
Berlin is great all year round, but it can get a bit too warm in the summer and a bit too cold in the winter, so I recommend going in the fall and spring. Try to avoid the Berlin Marathon, though. They seal off a huge chunk of the city which makes it hard to move around.
Soho House opened up in Berlin a few years ago and seems to have changed the hotel game. They have a rooftop pool, very nice restaurants and bars, great rooms and a good location. Michelberger Hotel is a very cheap alternative. It has fun features in the rooms and is close to many of the clubs, so its perfect if you are in town to party. It has the sweetest staff and a cosy lobby bar.
A good spot for breakfast is House of Small Wonder in Mitte. They have an Japanese infused all-day brunch menu. For instance eggs benedict with wasabi hollandaise.
Industry Standard in Neukölln has inexpensive small dinner dishes to share - and great natural wines. The menu is quite similar to the nordic way of cooking with just a few ingredients on each plate. Afterwards it’s an easy stroll around the block to Wild Things, a natural wine bar run by the owners of Industry Standard. A perfect place to try new wines and get drunk by the glass or by the bottle. You can also buy to-go with a nice discount.
At the moment I like to discover more of Neukölln. The area around Weserstrasse and Weichselstrasse has some nice restaurants and bars that I want to investigate more.
Berlin is a lot about techno, so if you are into club music, you have come to the right place. The obvious one is Berghain, which also houses the famed Panorama Bar; the best club in the world, if you ask many DJs and ravers. I’ve played there three times myself and it’s just magical, really. Other cool clubs I’ve played in the past couple of years are Ipse, Chalet, Kater Blau and Watergate.
Each club is a different experience, with unique lineups and a chance to listen to some of the greatest DJs around. At any given time there are at least five to ten great parties going on in Berlin. Tip for Panorama Bar: Go on Sunday afternoon. Most tourists have easy-jetted out of there and you can enjoy the “afterburner vibe”, where many locals tend to come too.
There are a lot of cool and small galleries scattered around Berlin, that I always wish I had better time to check out. These days, I’m mostly in town for around 24 hours to eat, drink, DJ, sleep and then fly back to Copenhagen.
König Galerie represent Elmgreen & Dragset and Jeppe Hein among many others. Blain Southern is cool too. And if you like Tate Modern in London you should check out Martin Gropius Bau.
Taxis are cheap compared to Denmark, so that’s the easiest way to get around. The tram and metro however, work really well. German efficiency, remember? The city is huge, so going by foot is only recommended if you plan to hang out a whole day within a certain neighborhood.
